The Hubris of Sustainable Architecture
In reading Mostafavi's "Ecological Urbanism" I was stuck on the idea of our materialistically disposable lives of today. The sources and actual materials we interact with everyday are so remote to us as users that everything is truly artificial. The hubris I find in this is that many of us care enough to talk about it but not enough to change our routines/our practices.
To bring this question to professional practice, I have found a desire from some architects to source more "pure" materials to minimize ecological impact and carbon footprint - even if clients have no real interest in doing so. Often in the building process, the desire for honest materials is replaced by the necessity of financial comfort. But even the projects that boast sustainable materials and technologically advanced systems fall short due to the processes and means to use said sustainable material.
Similar to the argument to push for electric vehicles: the infrastructure is not there to support it yet and ultimately these electric vehicles pollute just as much (although not through the tailpipe) but to a foreign factory's ground and air.
What Mostafavi brings up about specific material's sources, is so important, but another aspect of the conversation that needs to be discussed is finding efficiencies in our disposable and artificial worlds.
For example: In the Pearl river Delta of China, oysters were used in construction to reduce solar radiation. Even though oysters shells can be found in the region, a large amount of these oysters came from ship's ballasts to ensure maritime safety. These oysters would come from many miles away, but through resourcefulness, what would be waste is now a building material.
Ultimately, I see hubris in sustainable architecture because it seems like a moral checkbox more than a desire to create good architecture - which in my opinion inherently considers sustainability but through the lens of resourcefulness and simple efficiencies.
Using oysters to build is a very creative way of using a material that would normally go to waste. I am curious, however, what the process was for getting the oysters from the boats. Where they all collected elsewhere and shipped or were they collected as boats from far away passed through nearby ports? Being able to collect material and simultaneously clean a boat when it docks could be one way to accumulate material overtime without having to use additional resources to ship it.
ReplyDeleteIt's all so ironic to me because the sustainability movement was born out of very counter cultural protests of capitalism's contribution and lack of accountability toward global warming, but it has become another arm of the capitalist machine. It's now used by the likes of Bjarke Ingels to justify massive billion-dollar housing projects, while asking nothing of the consumer, while the only people who can drive real change to real in consumption is the collective consumer. The real solutions are exactly what you're showing, simple and clever ways to rethink our surroundings in ways that don't make things worse.
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